1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a navigation apparatus and a navigation method, and more particularly, to a navigation apparatus and a navigation method using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) that is capable of guiding a path to the destination using RFID.
2. Related Art
An RFID technology is to recognize information and the surrounding environment on various objects from tags attached to the objects using a RF signal, that is, a radio frequency and collecting, storing, processing, and tracking the information on the objects to provide various services, such as position measurement of the objects, a remote process and management on the objects, and information exchange between the objects. The RFID technology complements disadvantages of existing bar code systems and accelerates informatization of the objects, and thus has been actively used as a core technology of a ubiquitous sensor network (USN).
In recent years, the use of the RFID technology has been progressively spread. For example, the RFID technology has been used in a factory automation field, a traffic field, a medical treatment field, or a leisure or facility management field, specifically, in a baggage handling system to manage physical distribution at an airport, a container handling system to manage harbors, and a medical managing system to provide a POC (Point Of Care) service.
Korean Patent No. 10-478-452 (title of the invention: LOCALIZATION APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR MOBILE ROBOT) discloses an apparatus and method that is capable of unitively operating an audiometry coordinate system and an RFID coordinate system and recognizing a position and direction of a mobile robot.
However, Korean Patent No. 10-478-452 is disadvantageous in that, since the absolute coordinates for a current position are acquired using the RFID coordinate system and the relative coordinates for the current position are acquired using the audiometry coordinate system, coordinate axes of the audiometry coordinate system and the RFID coordinate system need to be aligned, which requires a complicated calculation process in aligning the coordinate axes.
Korean Patent No. 10-478-452 discloses only an apparatus and method that is capable of recognizing the current position and direction of the mobile robot. However, Korean Patent No. 10-478-452 does not disclose a navigation function of displaying GIS (Geographic Information System) information on the current position of the mobile robot and guiding a path to the destination.
European Laid-opened Publication No. EP 1610258 (title of the invention: RFID COMMUNICATION APPARATUS WITH TAG POSITION DETECTION MEANS) discloses an apparatus and method that is capable of estimating an input direction of a radio wave transmitted from an RFID tag through at least one antenna, calculating a position of the RFID tag on the basis of the estimated input direction to determine the position of the RFID tag, and communicating with the RFID tag at the determined position.
European Laid-opened Publication No. EP 1610258 discloses an apparatus and method that is capable of determining a position of an RFID tag to enable a communication between the RFID tag and an RFID reader, but does not disclose an apparatus and method that is capable of providing a current position of a navigation apparatus and a moving direction to guide a path to the destination.